Safe House (2012)

Ryan Reynolds plays Matt Weston, a CIA officer stationed at a safe house in South Africa. His relatively quiet life is shattered by the arrival of Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), a CIA operative gone rogue. Weston plans to deliver Frost to the agency, but slowly becomes aware that his faith in the integrity of that institution may be founded. 

This is a slick, efficient thriller that seems somewhat derivative. Certainly the Jason Bourne films were a major influence. Washington has presence; Reynolds less so. Better than either is Vera Farmiga as Catherine Linklater, the one CIA operative who doesn’t seem to be corrupt.

Plot-wise it’s all a little predictable. Of course the CIA bosses turn out to be baddies – a twist you could guess within just a few minutes. I also didn’t really enjoy the excessively filtered visuals, which at times masked what was actually going on. But it’s an enjoyable romp nonetheless.

Body of Lies (2008)

Intelligent Ridley Scott CIA thriller that’s extremely gripping. 

The CIA operative on the ground is Leonardo DiCaprio and his superior is Russell Crowe. They are attempting to track down a terrorist called al-Saleem. 

Mark Strong plays the head of Jordanian Intelligence. Oscar Isaac is a CIA field operative in Iraq. And Rahavard Farahani plays a nurse who DiCaprio falls for and thus endangers. 

All of these actors are superb in their roles. 

It’s a complex web of connections and locations. It’s extremely violent for a “15”, with scenes of torture and close-ups of shootings. The use of drone-sourced visuals gives it an appealing tech-heavy feel.

Spy Game (2001)

Retiring CIA officer Nathan Muir (Robert Redford) learns that his protege Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) is in trouble in Hong Kong. Muir’s CIA colleagues begin to dig in to his past, and the film then reveals his story in a series of flashbacks. The somewhat disjointed and bitty narrative focuses on specific incidents in Vietnam, Berlin and Beirut. 

It’s not quite the thriller you might have imagined or hoped for – mainly because Redford never gets out of the office. Somehow he is able to run rings around his CIA colleagues, even though they would’ve had the same training as him. As such, it’s an intriguing thriller that doesn’t quite work. The basic ingredients are good, and with more focus in the storytelling, it might have been more satisfying.

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

In the third film in the series, Jason Bourne is still on the run and still trying to piece together his past. Plus, he’s continuing his attempts to expose corruption within the CIA. It’s a clever continuation of the first two films (you could argue that they simply made the second film again) that manages to develop the story and character as well. 

Matt Damon continues to pace around and cross the road a lot, escaping from vicious killers and generally evading capture again and again. Julia Stiles appears for the third time as the CIA’s Nicky Parsons and Joan Allen returns as CIA deputy director Pamela Landy. The baddies working within the agency are played by David Strathairn and Albert Finney. There’s even a journalist (Paddy Considine) who works for The Guardian. 

It’s fast cut, with director Paul Greengrass using the same jerky-camera “documentary” style he employed in United 93 and The Bourne Supremacy. The action sequences are brilliantly done, and you end up glued to the screen as you try to fathom how Bourne can possibly stay alive through these increasingly desperate situations.

As with The Bourne Supremacy, the title makes no sense.

Jason Bourne (2016)

Bourne again? 

The fifth instalment in the series and – as of 2021 – the final part. Jason (Matt Damon) is still at large, but thanks to the hacking by old pal Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) he now has extra information about his past – and an insight into what happened to his father. 

In many ways it’s the same film yet again, but it’s such a good film that it’s worth remaking. This time, Tommy Lee Jones plays the corrupt head of the CIA. There’s also stuff about internet privacy with a social media corporation called Deep Dream (led by Riz Ahmed), plus an ambitious young CIA tech wizard who may or may not be helping J.B. (Alicia Vikander as Heather Lee). 

Paul Greengrass directs again, delivering incredible action sequences. The car chase in Las Vegas is especially dynamic. 

If there’s a fault it’s that there’s little psychological development for Bourne. Yes, there’s a thread about his dad but he has even less dialogue than usual. I’d have liked him to have shared more of a relationship with Nicky, or at least some “meaningful” glances, but following the first film there seems to have been a conscious decision for the series to avoid romance. It makes sense plot-wise because Bourne can’t stay in the same place for a couple of minutes before men in cars and copters arrive to kill him. But it would still have been nice to give him the extra depth of reconnecting with the woman who loved him.

The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

Second instalment in the series inspired by Robert Ludlum’s novels. Matt Damon reprises the role of the CIA agent who lost his memory. This film pretty much continues where the last one left off. Bourne is now living in hiding in India with his partner Marie (Franka Potente), when their cover is blown and someone shows up to kill him. Once again he has to go on the run. Just like Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive (his spiritual cousin), he also has to try to clear his name. 

It’s ridiculously exciting – probably even more so than The Bourne Identity. Director Paul Greengrass really understands how to make this kind of film work. The action sequences are superbly filmed and the pacing is spot on. The car chase in Moscow is especially thrilling. Also better in this film is the CIA boss (Joan Allen), who has a commanding presence. 

Matt Damon plays it just right: charismatic but understated. It makes the James Bond films (even the Daniel Craigs) look a little old hat.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)

Biopic directed by George Clooney. That fact alone sets alarm bells ringing – I couldn’t finish his film Leatherheads (2008) and I barely got through The Monuments Men (2014), as they were simply too self-conscious and annoying. He’s fine at surface-level tricksiness, but there’s little emotional depth and his “funny” scenes fall flat. 

This film is marginally better. Chuck Barris (played by Sam Rockwell) is a successful TV producer who also kills people for the CIA. He’s recruited by George Clooney, works alongside Julia Roberts and is in a relationship with Drew Barrymore. 

The story is interesting, and Rockwell and Barrymore have real chemistry together, but Clooney’s direction is awkward and gimmicky. He regularly changes filters and keeps reminding you that you’re watching a film, rather than simply letting you become immersed in it. 

The film dodges perhaps the most interesting aspect of Rockwell’s life – the possibility that all of his CIA deeds were completely invented and never took place. That would have made for a whole extra dimension to the story, but it seems that Clooney is a hamfisted director who just couldn’t quite handle the material.

Licence to Kill (1989)

The second and final Timothy Dalton Bond film is surprisingly good – almost a proper thriller. Unusually, the plot has an arc that you can actually follow: Bond chases a drug baron, Sanchez, who injured his CIA pal Felix Leiter (David Hedison) and murdered Felix's wife. Bond has his licence revoked, but – seeking revenge – goes rogue with the sexy CIA agent Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell). In fact, Bouvier could be the strongest female lead in a Bond film since Diana Rigg in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) – a three-dimensional character for a change. Only the extended presence of the ancient Desmond Llewelyn as Q in “field operative” mode tips this over into ludicrous territory, although Llewelyn is always enjoyable to watch.

Timothy Dalton seemed unloved as Bond, but he has a certain charm that makes him watchable. And unlike Pierce Brosnan, who acts with his hair, he actually gets his lines out in a convincing manner.

Sicario (2015)

Tense drug thriller starring Emily Blunt as an FBI agent who gets mixed up in a Mexican gang war beyond her comprehension. Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin play the assassin and CIA agent she finds herself working with. In fact, she soon learns that she’s simply being used to grant legal authority to their actions.

It’s brutally violent and makes for uncomfortable watching. The two male leads are convincingly ruthless, but Blunt seems an odd choice and is slightly awkward as tough-but-sensitive Kate Macer – although that awkwardness may well be the point.

Director Denis Villeneuve gives even the grittiest scenes a panoramic lavishness, as he did in Arrival and Blade Runner 2049.

You are left despairing at the drug wars – a problem that only seems to escalate over time – and this grim, super-realist film is easier to admire than to enjoy.

The Hunt for Red October (1990)

Submarine drama adapted from a Tom Clancy novel and starring Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin. Connery is a Russian naval captain who wants to defect to the USA, but his actions threaten to bring about full-scale war. Baldwin is the CIA intelligence analyst who has to save the world.

The performances are reasonable (James Earl Jones and Joss Ackland also have roles), but there’s something missing. It’s probably unfair to compare this film to Das Boot or K-19: The Widowmaker, but I never once felt I was aboard an actual submarine. It’s oddly lifeless, with a lack of atmosphere and a certain stilted quality. This isn’t helped by Connery, whose “calm” manner is taken to extremes, resulting in merely an expressionless mask.

Motivations stay mysterious: we don’t learn why Connery wants to defect or how his staff feel about it. Nor do we discover why one of the sub’s cooks wants to sabotage the mission.

Another oddity is the use of subtitles in the early stages of the film. Once it has been established that these are Russians speaking, the subtitles cease and their dialogue reverts to English. That creates confusion later when subtitles return and it’s actually unclear which language Baldwin and Connery are meant to be speaking in. It would have been better to use the standard film trope of a non-English language simply being spoken in English – but with accents.

While there’s nothing really wrong with the film, and you could argue that it ticks all the right boxes for a Cold War thriller, ultimately it falls flat. But a more inspired director than John McTiernan could probably have made it work.

Dying of the Light (2014)

Simplistic, one-dimensional thriller that was disowned by writer/director Paul Schrader and some of the cast. 

Nicolas Cage plays a CIA man intent on revenge after he was tortured by a terrorist 22 years previously. The unusual twist is that he is suffering from a form of dementia, which affects not only his memory, but also his moods and behaviour.

It has a low-budget feel and there’s very little action. It seems like a cut-price attempt to make a Jason Bourne film, but without Paul Greengrass’s directorial energy and skill. 

The dementia angle is surprisingly low-key in the plot. I was expecting it to be used as a rationale for all sorts of odd outbursts from Cage.

Fair Game (2010)

Superb thriller. Adapted from the memoirs of the two protagonists, it tells the story of CIA operative Valerie Plane and her diplomat husband Joseph C. Wilson. The pair were responsible for exposing the US government’s fabrication of the evidence about Weapons of Mass Destruction that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq. 

Naomi Watts and Sean Penn deliver remarkably convincing performances in the lead roles. There’s the political saga, but also the story of their marriage and family, and the strain that these events put on them. 

I admire the realism of it, such as the way that every scene featuring the couple’s children had them constantly asking questions and demanding attention. I also respect the film for delving into the moral ambiguities of the topic – should you tell the truth even if it puts loved ones at risk? – and not providing any simplistic answers.

Green Zone (2010)

Exciting thriller loosely based on real events and directed by Paul Greengrass, with the familiar, dynamic style that makes his best films so watchable. 

It’s 2003 and Matt Damon is a US soldier in Baghdad, leading a unit in the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction. But working with a member of the CIA (Brendan Gleeson) and a journalist (Amy Ryan), he comes to realise that there aren’t any weapons to find and that the government has acted on false information. 

It’s a thriller, a war film and a conspiracy drama. 

Matt Damon – rarely less than brilliant – is as riveting as he ever was. 

The fast cuts make it especially exciting, and I like the "low-res" visuals (which were no doubt exceedingly expensive).

Duplicity (2009)

Former CIA and MI6 secret agents Claire (Julia Roberts) and Ray (Clive Owen) work as corporate spies. They become romantically involved and decide to pair up as a team. The stakes are raised when they have the chance to earn themselves $35 million, but the problem is that they simply cannot trust each other. There are hints of The Thomas Crown Affair, but it’s less skilfully handled. 

It’s nearly an engaging comedy thriller, but the “funny” bits really aren’t funny enough. Also, there are so many bluffs and double-bluffs that it can be tricky to follow. Ultimately, the whole scam scenario is so unlikely that it’s difficult to believe. 

Owen and Roberts always appeal but they can’t really shine in such a self-consciously tricksy, disjointed narrative. In fact, the film’s flaws are built in from the very beginning: the characters have a deliberate coldness to indicate their professionalism and mutual distrust. But that coldness makes them – and their story – a lot harder to like. One solution would have been to spice up their encounters with a little more passion (which worked in The Thomas Crown Affair), but Duplicity, which has a “12” certificate, opts not to take that route. 

On the plus side, it’s refreshing to see a thriller that doesn’t include any guns or killing.

Clear and Present Danger (1994)

Harrison Ford stars in this adaptation of a Tom Clancy thriller about a CIA man who gets involved in both a Colombian drug war and the murky secrets of the White House. Maybe it worked as a novel, but as a film it’s too long and too slow. Buried in there somewhere are two interesting stories – a guns ’n’ copters action plot and a political saga built around protocols that sadly seem almost quaint in the debased Trump era. Instead, you get a rather drab and convoluted mess that cannot satisfy. That said, Harrison Ford is as riveting as ever, Willem Dafoe isn’t bad as field agent John Clark and James Earl Jones is convincing as the dying Vice Admiral James Greer.

Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

A ludicrous mess. Part four of the popular series stars Mark Wahlberg as an inventor, Nicola Peltz as his daughter and Jack Reynor as her boyfriend. The baddies are played by Stanley Tucci and Kelsey Grammer. 

The plot (borrowed from the internet): “The Autobots, a faction of robots from the planet Cybertron, are hunted down by an elite CIA black ops unit and a ruthless bounty hunter. They turn to a struggling inventor and his daughter for help.”

It turns out that it was the Transformers, and not a meteorite, that caused the death of the dinosaurs. 

The robots have been given silly voices and accents, which makes them a lot less scary. One of them even seems to have a beard and a cigar. Why? It’s nice to see them transform out of cars and lorries, but it’s utterly exhausting to see so much “impossible” CGI so quickly unfolding for such a long time. The running time of 165 minutes is wildly excessive. 

Everything is so big, loud, fast and explosive that the film quickly finds it has nowhere left to go. In dramatic terms, it’s a disaster: you are left completely numb by the relentlessness of it. But on the plus side, it’s unintentionally funny and some of the daft dialogue is absolutely priceless. For example: “Autobots, we’re going to prove who we are! That’s why we’re here!”

Argo (2012)

Superb thriller regarding the real-life events of the so-called “Canadian Caper”. 

In November 1979, Iranian extremists stormed the US embassy in Tehran as a result of the USA (under Jimmy Carter) granting the Shah political asylum. A total of 66 staff were taken as hostages, but six diplomats escaped and were given shelter by the Canadian ambassador. Incredibly, CIA operative Tony Mendez (played here by Ben Affleck, who also directs) travels to Tehran in an attempt to rescue the six under the premise that they are making a science-fiction film, Argo, in the region. 

It’s tense and exciting stuff. The sense of threat is built up with real expertise. The storytelling is lucid. All of the characters are portrayed brilliantly, with no weak links. Even John Goodman, who plays a prosthetics expert (alongside Alan Arkin as a film producer), is reined in enough that he cannot mess it up.

Charlie Wilson’s War (2007)

Directed by Mike Nichols, this is based on a true story. 

A US congressman takes it upon himself to assist the Afghan troops suffering at the hands of Soviet invaders by raising the funds to equip them with weapons.

Tom Hanks is ideally cast as the charming, heavy-drinking Wilson. Julia Roberts is good as an influential socialite Joanne Herring, but doesn’t have enough scenes to really shine. Better is Amy Adams as Wilson's personal assistant Bonnie Bach. Philip Seymour Hoffman is charismatic as CIA operative Gust Avrakotos. Emily Blunt is weirdly underused in a role that gets very little screen time.

Hanks is deliberately ambiguous and the film steers clear of passing judgement on his character. The story is excellently told, so I’m not quite sure why I didn’t enjoy it more. Perhaps it's because it aims at comedy in places but could have been much funnier.

Red Sparrow (2018)

An oddly awkward thriller. 

Manipulated by her evil uncle in the SVR (Matthias Schoenaerts), a former ballerina for the Bolshoi (JennIfer Lawrence) becomes embroiled in Russian intelligence and is assigned to entrap a CIA operative (an underwhelming Joel Edgerton) via methods of “sexpionage”. 

The plot is complicated, with countless twists, but just about hangs together if you don’t ask too many questions. What makes the film overwrought and even embarrassing to watch is the excessive violence, torture and rape. It seems to revel in all those things. Yet, incredibly, it’s still a “15” certificate. 

Jennifer Lawrence is unable to make much of her character because the part is so cold and robotic. The sections set in Sparrow School, with Charlotte Rampling as the Matron, border on the ridiculous and farcical – with a gratuitously pervy quality. It makes you wonder why an actress as well-established as Lawrence would have chosen to be associated with the film.

The Bourne Identity (2002)

Taut thriller based on the Robert Ludlum novel and directed by Doug Liman. 

Matt Damon plays a man found shot, floating in the sea, just about alive but suffering severe amnesia. He tries to discover who he is and track down the agents (including Clive Owen) trying to kill him. In the process he uncovers a complex CIA conspiracy centred on a mysterious black-ops programme called Treadstone.

There are elements of James Bond (international locations, fast and thrilling chase sequences), The Fugitive (smart guy outwits authorities chasing him) and Memento (attempts to piece together a forgotten life), but it still feels fresh. The action never lets up and Damon’s subtle, low-key performance is easy to like. His Mini-driving German girlfriend Marie Kreutz (Franka Potente) is also appealing.

A string of sequels would follow.